Public vs Private High School

juillet
Fri, 28 May 2010 15:39:27 +0000

I’m just going to say what I learned working as an advocate for my public Magnet high school, along with some of the other alumni who were in colleges in the area.

Part of public high schools’ resources are based upon what the district puts into the school, yes, but another big part is the care that the parents and students put into the school as well. My school district had a big disconnect with the amount of money spent per student in the schools in the southern part of the district (solidly middle-class, where I lived) versus the northern part of the district (more upper-middle-class families). But in addition to the money, the parents agitated. Their PTAs were strong, they got local businesses to partner with the schools and provide resources, and let’s face it, they were far less focused on the football team’s uniforms and marching band’s trips and more focused on academics and resources that would help their students excel, like new books and laptop computers.

One of my jobs as an alumni advocate was to speak to the parents that were coming to PTA meetings and get them more involved. We also spoke with community leaders to try to get sponsorships from companies, and stuff. The more parents that divest from public high schools, the worse they get. The really rich parents put their kids in high-class private schools; the middle-class parents either do the same or move to “better” districts or lie or use friends and relatives’ addresses to get their kids in there; and the only people that are left are the lower-middle-class parents who care but can’t afford to move - some of which are really involved and some of which don’t have the time to be as involved because they’re working their butts off…and the parents who don’t care that much, or at all.

But when the parents saw that we cared, and saw that we weren’t stupid and realized what the differences between our school and some of the northern district schools were, they started to care more. And when they showed more interest, the school improved…slowly. Not that our school was that bad to begin with - it’s a great public school with a Magnet program, that I was in.

Anyway, I guess my point should be, maybe the focus should be less about the percentage of kids who go to private schools…and more about improving what you have. And don’t take it as naivety…I completely understand why parents would want to pull their kids out of a failing school, and don’t want to use their kids as guinea pigs for idealism. But one of the best ways to get a public high school from good to great is to get the WHOLE community involved. Even the people who don’t have kids. They need to care, too, and the way to make them care is to make them realize that the high school affects them, too. A good high school attracts new developments, as higher-income families want to move in; new developments attract newer and better business for both existing businesses and any future investments; that generates revenue for the school AND the community. Not to mention that it increases the social and human capital of the community.

Keep your kids in, and get just as involved with that public school as you would be at a private school where you’d be paying $30,000 a year for them to go.